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Nortel's nuclear missel of a patent portfolio has finally been divvied up to the highest bidder. Or should I say bidders?

Apple, RIM, EMC, Sony, Ericsson, and Microsoft made up the consortium that paid $4.5 bilion for the rights to the 6,000 plus patents Nortel held.

The sale includes more than 6,000 patents and patent applications spanning wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service provider, semiconductors and other patents. The extensive patent portfolio touches nearly every aspect of telecommunications and additional markets as well, including Internet search and social networking.

Google, who opened the bidding up at $900 million, appears to have reached the end of the baseball bat after everyone else and missed out. It is unclear who will get what among the members of the consortium. Common sense would assume the consortium would divide the patent portfolio based on the level of their investment. RIM reportedly threw $770 million into the pot and $Ericsson $340 million, as for the rest it is unknown. With $70 billion in cash laying around, I would venture Apple put in a sizable chunk.

If the number of IP lawsuits lately between major players in the telecom and consumer electronics world are any indication, the owners of these newly acquired patents have a lot to gain from their investment. Particularly in regards to 4G network technology LTE, which 105 of the patents pertain to.

However, the sale is still subject to approvals by the U.S and Canadian courts, and a hearing is expected to take place July 11th. It will be interesting to say the least to see what patents Apple secures when all the legal dust settles.

I think it would be best for consumers if these patents were divided up into equal parts and ONLY one part sold to each company bidding for them. it would be too much power for one or two companies to have all these patents. a company like apple would use them to kill any and all competition and we all know who suffers most when there's no competition.

No. Google threw in more than Rim, Sony, & Ericsson. They will get their share of this gold mine. I'd like to know how much Apple, & Microsoft paid.

Sorry I think you will find Google were not in the consortium that purchased the patents and missed out totally. Google only offered $900 million for all the patents the consortium ended up paying $4.5 Billion to secure them all.

What would persuade you to write crap like this? I don't see you contributing at all

Did you read the piece? Maybe it's ok by your standards for a professional journalist (professional meaning he actually gets paid for this 'work') to make such basic mistakes such as spelling errors but I expect more. Especially when the primary tool of his trade has a gd spellchecker built into it lol! And not contributing? I disagree. If my comment gets back to the author and motivates him to take an extra minute to edit his article then it was worth it. But having read this persons work before, I can say that he probably did edit this piece prior to submitting and that is what is so disappointing.